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There’s Just One Catch to the Idea of Inexhaustible Seafood — It’s Wrong

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There’s Just One Catch to the Idea of Inexhaustible Seafood — It’s Wrong

By Mort Rosenblum October 1, 2012 1:26 amOctober 1, 2012 1:26 am

Mort RosenblumAngel Mozos Ramirez, a fish and seafood wholesaler, at the Mercado de San Antón in Madrid.

MADRID — — Angel Mozos Ramirez, none too sturdy at 70, was wrestling a swordfish four times his weight. Some of his workers were helping, and in any case, the northern Atlantic behemoth was no longer putting up a fight — cold and lifeless on the scales, the great fish awaited the sharp blades that would cut it into rich red steaks and the delivery trucks that would disperse them across fish-mad Spain.

Tsukiji Market in Tokyo gets all the press with bluefin tunas auctioned at Ferrari prices. At Mercamadrid, Europe’s biggest fish emporium, the yearly volume of 130,000 metric tons is a quarter of Tsukiji’s. But its wide variety and swift efficiency explain why keeping seafood sustainable is such a challenge.

“Fish stocks are so rich, thanks to God, that they are limitless,” Angel assured me at the wholesale stand he operates with his sons. “Whatever we do, the seas are greater than man.”

With his blinding smile and booming business, he is a glass-half-full optimist. I want to believe him. But his confidence persists because when he orders fish, it always arrives. That is the problem.

In every ocean, rapacious trawlers, purse seiners and longliners are overfishing to an alarming degree. While some of the worst scofflaws are Spanish, the bulk of Spain’s vessels supply demands within legal parameters. Yet lax laws and high quotas, whether global or national, flout irrefutable scientific evidence.

We have eaten bluefin to the point of its collapse, and even as prices skyrocket, we keep on eating it. The problem is similar with many of the 300-plus species of fish, crustaceans and odd creatures on display each morning at Mercamadrid.

Although the chain is long from net to table, few people think beyond the link that connects to them. How can fish be scarce if it’s there when you want it?

That morning, I toured neighborhood markets heaped with old favorites and exotic species fighting to survive, including the ubiquitous hake to the delicate South Pacific corvina. At €48 euros a kilo, or $28 a pound, I could have supplied a restaurant with fat Mediterranean tuna belly. Each time I asked where the fish came from, the answer was the same: Mercamadrid. No one thought further down the chain.

Having just spent a year tracking fish for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, I know the consequences of that sort of thinking.

At midday, I found Angel — still smiling — at his two retail counters in the chic and modern Mercado de San Anton. He stocked 50 sorts of flatfish, 20 crustaceans from tiny shrimp to lobsters, and mounds of shelled delicacies. I stopped at a pile of carabineros, deep red prawns scraped from the ocean floor off Morocco — hauled up with nearly everything else in their fragile mini-ecosystems. Five inches long, they cost €15 each, almost $20. That works out to €3 a bite.

“These should go for €20, but no one would buy them,” the guy behind the counter told me. An hour later, that first batch was gone, replaced by another pile of slightly longer ones. At €20 apiece, those also vanished fast.

In truth, I’ve got to admit, I tried one of those sea-floor carabineros for reportorial purposes. It tasted awfully good. If you’re long on funds and short on conscience, enjoy. It’s like those sashimi slivers of fatty toro carved from bluefin bellies on auction at Tsukiji. There’ll be plenty — until there aren’t any.

Correction: October 1, 2012A previous version of this post gave the wrong name for the market in the photograph. It is the Mercado de San Antón, not Mercamadrid.